


new/old homesickness

by thethrillof



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Family Bonding, Gen, Post-Embrace the Void Ending (Hollow Knight), Suicidal Thoughts, Unreliable Narrator, thk is not okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25015687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thethrillof/pseuds/thethrillof
Summary: The Hollow Knight follows an order and leaves; their sister retrieves them from a ruin they did not expect.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 82





	new/old homesickness

**Author's Note:**

> an anonymous prompt from tumblr i wrote at 5 am, fixed up a little for publication!

The Radiance had spread through most of the kingdom, but She had never reached the mind of the Palace’s retainers. Their devotion would falter in nothing but death.

The Hollow Knight being so linked to Her allowed them to see snatches of the world through the Infected eyes. The Shadow Creepers were too entrenched in instinct to leave where they crawled to follow the paths to where the King was supposed to be.

Or there was a deterrence to the place, unknown and infuriating (to Her), of similar make to the space in the center of the City. The space set between the divide. The space with the Fountain.

After everything, when they had finally seen the statue of themselves, standing high over Dreamers that were faceless, their legs buckled. Their sister had to nearly drag them into a building. They could not stop looking at it.

They could not stop _thinking._

This is similar. This is worse.

Hornet is not here.

She said they were healed enough to leave, if they so wished. They took her words as order. They had imposed on her enough; their place, had they any, would be where they had spent their existence before the Sealing.

And that place is not here.

They considered error. They had little experience in Hallownest itself, merely knowing they had to travel downward, where the Palace waited near the call of the Abyss.

They are a living mistake, but even they cannot miss the shape of the entrance. The space where the Palace was. A collapsed Kingsmould, broken, unfit to guard even remains.

If there had been a single glance through one of the Infected, perhaps they could process this. Perhaps they could simply set it on the pile of their guilt, their acknowledgement of their failures. Perhaps there would have been understanding that this is what the bugs of Hallownest meant, when ripples of fear and ‘the King is not answering’ turned to ‘the King is gone’ and made their falls into Her embrace easier.

Their legs do not entirely give. They are fortunate in this. They are close enough they could lean against a part of it, but the crumbling stone would likely collapse as they would. They catch themselves enough to sag against their Nail, now nothing but a walking-stick with a sharp end.

Jutting spikes of stone are left behind the crumbling doorway. As though something massive had simply _taken_ it. Lifted it. Tore it from its foundations. Put it elsewhere.

There is no _elsewhere._

If it had been moved through Hallownest, somehow, they would know. If it had left Hallownest…

If…the Pale King had left…

Of course he had left. Everything was dead. The prayers the Hollow Knight should not have been able to string together to him were nothing but desperate wishes--that he would come back to them, that he would find a replacement for them, that he would allow them an end.

And yet, here they are. Where they, perhaps, held a hope a sign of him would be.

There is much more for the Hollow Knight to look at than the entrance. The space above where towers once touched the ceiling is devoid of even ruins. Most of the poles mounted along the remaining path stand higher than what is left.

The yawning emptiness should be incomparable to anything. Held open now, an object of nightmare long before She ripped into their thoughts, the Abyss should be worse.

And yet they cannot raise their head. A cowardly part of them nearly wishes to turn away. To go to even the Abyss. Facing their crimes—being chosen, surviving, leaving—does not make their chest as tight as simply _standing here._

They still cannot quite understand emotions, though now knowing they have them. They were never properly taught what any were, and ignored what they could have grasped after spending so much of their existence denying it, crushing any flicker down to nearly nothing. 

One they know is grief. They had felt it for nearly all of their imprisonment.

Another they know is hope. It was tangled there, too.

It is better, or it is worse, that is it purely emotion that moves them to step into the ruins as best they can? There is no need to ask this, where either option is awful.

There is nothing recognizable to be found. 

They do not know whether it would be more terrible if there were—a remnant of furniture, pieces of Wingmoulds, remains of retainers or the White Lady’s silvery plants—and they numbly banish the thought. 

It takes great time and effort to move anywhere. Concave parts catch their feet. Some have holes, cracked deep into the earth, where they cannot tell whether or not Void wisps increase in intensity around. Their Nail scrapes new lines over old grooves, crosshatching marking their steps.

They do not know what they’re doing.

Where the Palace once stood is still a massive area. Though they cannot be truly lost, they lose sight of their starting point quickly enough.

They continue moving forward, as they don’t know what else is left in this mission they’ve undertaken without true orders.

There is nothing here.

There is nothing.

They are tired. Always, but now, more.

There is no place to sit. They manage a lean, eventually, against a jutting spike that curves high, nearly perfect enough for their body to fit against.

They continue thinking, despite themselves. About not moving. About simply waiting in this place until their body finally fails. Until they are empty, or one with the stone surrounding them; nothing more than another statue, deservedly hidden in obscurity instead of being a false beacon in the center of the City.

They can nearly feel the weight of Hallownest, rock and life and space above. Less than there should be.

Everything _else_ is gone. They knew this. The missing Palace, truly, should not be a shock.

They stay. In the ruins of home, where no bug dares venture, it is nearly as timeless as waiting in the Egg.

They do not know how long they wait. 

They understand their desire to fade so literally is impossible, but they certainly hold no expectation for someone to find them.

They turn their head to Hornet once she, somehow, does.

She traverses the ruins. leaping from spike to spike, balancing on each dull point as easy as any floor. She does not seem pleased. Though she does not seem angry, either.

She is never angry. She, of all beings, deserves to be. About everything, not only them. And yet--

It is not their place to question her.

When she finds them and beckons, they follow her lead back out from where she'd come. They exit through an arbitrary gap, not the entrance.

This makes it easier to turn back and look again.

Nothing recognizable.

Of course there still wouldn't be.

Hornet watches them. She neither forces them to leave, nor does she leave herself.

“...I cannot allay your homesickness,” she says after they fail to move. “I will not lie by telling you it stops hurting. But this pain is endurable.”

She would know. She lost everything as badly as they. Worse, they think, though they won’t stack their suffering against anyone’s.

They cannot apologize. They had tried, once she told them she knew they were impure, and how she would not simply kill them for it.

They believed she wanted them gone, but she has retrieved them. They do not understand this.

Instead, they turn their thoughts to her literal words. 

_Homesickness._

_Home, sickness._ They weigh this term they cannot say, turning it over in their mind. They have not heard it before.

They know much about sickness. They have had enough of sickness, and they do not deserve to escape it. The word is quite apt, leading them so far, so fragile and foolishly, from where they began.

The Palace is gone. There is no home here. 

In truth, there never had been. As the Pale King could not be called Father, the White Palace was not home. They lost both to their own folly. There is no need for their return.

It was familiarity they desired.

Their sister flits ahead, across the caverns, only to stop and watch them with sharp eyes before she leaves their sight, or they hers.

…Perhaps it is familiarity she desires, as well. The Hollow Knight is nearly as broken as the Palace, or Deepnest, but they still, barely, remain.

They turn their back to the crumbling nothing.

That is what they will be, then. A piece of _a_ home. Something she knows. They would not find this objectionable, even if they could dare to object to their family.

As best as they can manage, the White Palace’s memory, in ruin and in glory, will be set aside. They will follow her instead, taking this strange new reason to _be._


End file.
